with audioread.audio_open(filename) as f:
print(f.channels, f.samplerate, f.duration)
for buf in f:
do_something(buf)

Buffers in the file can be accessed by iterating over the object returned from
audio_open. Each buffer is a bytes-like object (buffer, bytes, or
bytearray) containing raw 16-bit little-endian signed integer PCM
data. (Currently, these PCM format parameters are not configurable, but this
could be added to most of the backends.)

Additional values are available as fields on the audio file object:

channels is the number of audio channels (an integer).

samplerate is given in Hz (an integer).

duration is the length of the audio in seconds (a float).

The audio_open function transparently selects a backend that can read the
file. (Each backend is implemented in a module inside the audioread
package.) If no backends succeed in opening the file, a DecodeError
exception is raised. This exception is only used when the file type is
unsupported by the backends; if the file doesn't exist, a standard IOError
will be raised.

Audioread is "universal" and supports both Python 2 (2.6+) and Python 3
(3.2+).

Example

The included decode.py script demonstrates using this package to
convert compressed audio files to WAV files.

Version History

2.1.4

Fix a bug in the FFmpeg backend where, after closing a file, the program's
standard input stream would be "broken" and wouldn't receive any input.

2.1.3

Avoid some warnings in the GStreamer backend when using modern versions of
GLib. We now require at least GLib 2.32.

2.1.2

Fix a file descriptor leak when opening and closing many files using
GStreamer.

2.1.1

Just fix ReST formatting in the README.

2.1.0

The FFmpeg backend can now also use Libav's avconv command.
Fix a warning by requiring GStreamer >= 1.0.
Fix some Python 3 crashes with the new GStreamer backend (thanks to
@xix-xeaon).

2.0.0

The GStreamer backend now uses GStreamer 1.x via the new
gobject-introspection API (and is compatible with Python 3).

1.2.2

When running FFmpeg on Windows, disable its crash dialog. Thanks to
jcsaaddupuy.

When GStreamer fails to report a duration, raise an exception instead of
silently setting the duration field to None.

1.0.0

Catch GStreamer's exception when necessary components, such as
uridecodebin, are missing.
The GStreamer backend now accepts relative paths.
Fix a hang in GStreamer when the stream finishes before it begins (when
reading broken files).
Initial support for Python 3.

0.8

All decoding errors are now subclasses of DecodeError.

0.7

Fix opening WAV and AIFF files via Unicode filenames.

0.6

Make FFmpeg timeout more robust.
Dump FFmpeg output on timeout.
Fix a nondeterministic hang in the Gstreamer backend.
Fix a file descriptor leak in the MAD backend.

0.5

Fix crash when FFmpeg fails to report a duration.
Fix a hang when FFmpeg fills up its stderr output buffer.
Add a timeout to ffmpeg tool execution (currently 10 seconds for each
4096-byte read); a ReadTimeoutError exception is raised if the tool times
out.

0.4

Fix channel count detection for FFmpeg backend.

0.3

Fix a problem with the Gstreamer backend where audio files could be left open
even after the GstAudioFile was "closed".

0.2

Fix a hang in the GStreamer backend that occurs occasionally on some
platforms.